A bad trade at the start of the day

I am facing a peculiar problem. The days when my first trade hits the SL - I end up with more losing trades than good trades.

Not sure if the intent of making up the loss is leading upto more bad trades.

Has anyone else faced this problem - Any advices...

Try not to enter into trade before 10.45, in this case it may cut your
profit but will improve the correctness of direction.

Rahul, you just reminded me of my earlier days when I got the discipline of placing SLoss order (because most of successful traders do that, everybody says that SL are must tool for a traders etc etc..).
But when my trades were stopped out, it was still impacting my thought process..and that was impacting the next trade or rest of the day.
On self analysis, I found certain points that I handled with multiple approaches/ action.. It has changed my whole trading psychology. Unfortunately, there is no single remedy to fix each type of psychological problems.. Listing some of the pointer below that might help you to get to the root cause of the problem and take action to address those root cause..

1) Taking trade too early in the day .. most of the time, in first 5 min of mkt open.. Even if an indicator based system gives the signal, we forget to realise the all indicator calculation is spread over last 5, 10 or 13 or some number of bars. Early in the day, we don't have smooth flow of sufficient number of bars because last bar of yesterday and first bar of today have unusual price difference. That affects all indicator calculation and hence many false signals are generated. Our trading approach need to adjust for this.

2) Though u r using stops, but psychologically u may still not accepting that mkt can hit that stop and u will have loosing trade. When taking a trade, we can never know whether it is going to go in our favour or not. Even if our system has 99% win ratio.. this particular trade can fall in 1% category. So we have to tune ourself to accept that we might get stopped out.. And the amount that we are risking on this trade might be lost. And this loss, makes no difference to me.

If we can't accept the fact of loss and can't afford to loose our risk capital on trade.. then it will be very difficult to trade without emotions. So check out, if your risk per trade is higher then your ability to accept the loss. We might accept 100Rs of loss without any second thought, but can't accept 1000 Rs of loss with same ease. Each of us have different tolerance limit.

3) As a trader, our job is to find a trade and execute it. Not to think or dream about last trade or next trade. Whether the trade hits the target or the stop, that is not in our control. So we are prepared to loose the money that we are risking. Accept a loosing trade with same ease as we will accept a winning trade . Bottomline is - both are just a trade. Easier said then done. Infact, sometime very very difficult to address it as some of the issues might go down to your beliefs about money. Trading can't get smooth, until unless you reach the maturity where the outcome of trade, +ive or -ive , makes no difference to your next trade.

4) A loosing trade does not make us looser. It was just a trade. So after close of every trade (+ive
or -ive), lets get down to our job as a trader and focus on finding the next trade. And we can't focus on our search, till the time we can get rid of the thoughts / emotions from prev trade. We can't reach that balanced stage until we are REALLY prepared to accept the loss., . After a loosing trade, pass the right +ive msg to your mind like - one more trade closed, account capital free to risk on next trade, lets get on to the job of hunting the next opportunity. It might be just around the corner etc etc. (haven't we missed nice short trade signal soon after our stop was hit.. or haven't we hesitate to take the long trade again when our prev long entry was just stopped out and mkt reversed in long direction again)

5) If more then 2 or 3 trades are getting stopped out.. then probably it is not your day. Market is telling u loud and clear, that you are not listening to it correctly and getting it wrong. I have a daily limit for number of loosing trades and as soon as that limit is hit, I get the msg from market.. and take half day off then. No more trading, when I am not in synch with the mkt. It is equally important for us to konw when NOT TO TRADE. All days are not good trading day for us. Try to analysis, the price action of 1st hr of the days that gave good result and the days that gave u bad results.. You will know in 1st 1hr, if today is your day or not and manage your expectations accordingly.

Hope this helps
Happy Trading.

I am facing a peculiar problem. The days when my first trade hits the SL - I end up with more losing trades than good trades.

Not sure if the intent of making up the loss is leading upto more bad trades.

Has anyone else faced this problem - Any advices...

Yes , and the best thing to do about a bad trade is to forget about it as soon as possible.